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The trailer is super vague and we hardly know anything about Rin or her role in the new game yet you’ve all gone straight to calling it transphobic and pissing yourselves over it.

Also, if you’ve ever played a SMT (which I’m assuming most people complaining have not) you’d know that LGBT topics are hardly discussed or thrown in for jokes, nothing new here at all.

Is this an okay thing to do? Well, that’s subjective, I don’t mind either way but I know some people do. Should they change their games so that they please everyone and no one gets offended? Hell no, no one has to cater to you. If you don’t like the subject matter then don’t play the game or just say “eh, I don’t really agree with that but whatever, and shrug it off and keep going.

So tumblr shit the bed on the premise of someone cracking a joke at this Image:

They were suggesting Rin has a penis out of frame, which lead to Rin being called a Trap which lead to outraged LGBT+ Activists inherently assuming that a Trap is a Transwoman by nature and that the term is derogatory, no, you are a fucking idiot and a bigot if you think Trap = Transwoman. A Trap knows they are not a woman, they know they’re playing dress up for an objectively sexual reason. They know they don’t Identify as a woman. That’s like saying that Drag Queens by nature are Transwomen, when that is not true in the fucking slightest.

What actually happened here:

There is speculation (Not a written fact, anywhere in-game, yet, merely a theory) that Rin may be transgender like Erica Anderson, or a male cross-dresser.

What Tumblr is Suggesting:

like if the only time you dare to talk about ableism is when you want to compare it to other forms of discrimination to try and excuse it or invalidate it, youre gross and ableist.

if you feel the need to shut someone talking about ableism up because fighting for disabled people is “taking attention away” from your cause, youre an asshole and an ableist

not to mention the fact intersectionality exists and saying ableism isnt bad or shouldnt be talked about is very VERY counter productive to whatever social justice you claim to fight for.

like hate to clue yall, but if your fight for equality and social justice only expands to the abled bodied, or to a certain type of disabled person, youre not for equality, youre for ableism.

and im getting real tired of disabled people being left out of the conversation, of social justice, or only being wanted or talked about when a group can use us to push an agenda, like no, we are people.

we are people and we deserve equality just like everyone else.

and those who say ableism isnt that bad, or isnt as bad, or shouldnt be talked about, is openly showing theyre for equality but only if they can exclude disabled people.

no shut up, no you dont.

unless you are disabled yourself, you do not know what it is like being disabled,

My whole household is activists, including my 65 year old parents. Here are some things I’ve picked up from listening to and observing them all:

-Social change is like those Japanese bamboo fountain things, the ones that make the donk noise. It builds up over time, drip by drip, with no recognizable effect, and then it hits a tipping point and a lot happens all at once. Where you are in that process is influenced by a chaos theory level of factors beyond your or anyone else’s control. 

-Workaholism is the drug of choice for most activists, and it is counter productive as hell. It’s hard to resist, because what you are doing is important, time sensitive, and urgent. And the culture of activism is infected with this macho bullshit about pushing non stop. Well news flash m’dears, there will never come a time when there are not more important, urgent, time sensitive battles than any one person can address. Strategically, an activist can accomplish much more by insisting on a sustainable work-life balance and fighting on for decades than by burning themself out all at once. Rest. Play. Relax. Self-care, y’all. *Do it.*

-Trying to make your organization or movement completely ideologically pure makes you smaller, more isolated, and less effective.

-When you start organizing a group of people, the first ones to jump at the chance for leadership are not usually good leaders. What you want are the people who wait a little, think it through, see where it’s going. Also the people who already have the respect of their peers on account of being solid folks.

-Maintaining ethics and integrity can be a pain in the ass, especially when struggling against those who have neither, but it is *vital*. Any short term advantage you can gain through skeezy tactics is overshadowed by the trust and respect you lose, among your allies as well as your opponents.

-People’s politics and their personal decency don’t always match up in a logical way. You will meet people whose politics are straight fucked up, but who somehow still treat everyone they interact with directly well. You will also meet people who say and seem to believe all the right things, and are *assholes*. Handled right, the former can be hugely tactically useful as points of contact, and potentially teachable. The latter will join your organizations and proceed to shit right in the bed.

-The best way to support intense struggles against oppression far away in from a position of solidarity, with your feet firmly planted in struggles close to home. Ignoring local oppression because other people have it worse doesn’t help anybody. It’s a win for Team Oppression.

-Guilt, fear, and worry are not useful. Don’t beat yourself up for having these feelings, but know you are not in any way *obliged* to feel them. Acknowledge them, then let them go. Calm thinking and reasonable self confidence make you more effective.

-Don’t cut out people who are only capable of making smaller efforts and commitments in the struggle. That’s just throwing away resource. The idea that low effort contributions siphon away energy and make people less likely to be active is a myth. Low effort contributions make people feel involved, and more, not less, likely to participate in other ways.

-Running organizations in a democratic way is a giant pain in the ass. There will be drama and delays. There will be dumb decisions. Still 100% worth it.

-Organizing and activism are learned skills. There is a lot of history and a lot to be learned from it, there are people who have been doing this shit for ages and know how to make it work. Seek out good information. There’s no need to slow yourself down by reinventing the wheel.

Privileged people rarely take the voices of marginalized people seriously. Social justices spaces attempt to fix this with rules about how to respond to when marginalized people tell you that you’ve done something wrong. Like most formal descriptions of social skills, the rules don’t quite match reality. This is causing some problems that I think we could fix with a more honest conversation about how to respond to criticism.

The formal social justice rules say something like this:

You should listen to marginalized people.

When a marginalized person calls you out, don’t argue.

Believe them, apologize, and don’t do it again.

When you see others doing what you were called out for doing, call them out.

Those rules are a good approximation of some things, but they don’t actually work. It is impossible to follow them literally, in part because:

Marginalized people are not a monolith. 

Marginalized people have the same range of opinions as privileged people.

When two marginalized people tell you logically incompatible things, it is impossible to act on both sets of instructions.

For instance, some women believe that abortion is a human right foundational human right for women. Some women believe that abortion is murder and an attack on women and girls.

“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you who to believe, what policy to support, or how to talk about abortion. 

For instance, some women believe that religious rules about clothing liberate women from sexual objectification, other women believe that religious rules about clothing sexually objectify women. 

“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you what to believe about modesty rules. 

Narrowing it to “listen to women of minority faiths” doesn’t help, because women disagree about this within every faith.

When “listen to marginalized people” means “adopt a particular position”, marginalized people are treated as rhetorical props rather than real people.

Objectifying marginalized people does not create justice.

Since the rule is literally impossible to follow, no one is actually succeeding at following it. What usually ends up happening when people try is that:

One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people” 

Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen to marginalized people”

Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”

Marginalized people who disagree with that opinion are called out by privileged people for “talking over marginalized people”.

This results in a lot of fights over who is the true voice of the marginalized people.

We need an approach that is more conducive to real listening and learning.

This version of the rule also leaves us open to sabotage:

There are a lot of people who don’t want us to be able to talk to each other and build effective coalitions.

Some of them are using the language of call-outs to undermine everyone who emerges as an effective progressive leader. 

They say that they are marginalized people, and make up lies about leaders.

Or they say things that are technically true, but taken out of context in deliberately misleading ways.

The rules about shutting up and listening to marginalized people make it very difficult to contradict these lies and distortions. 

(Sometimes they really are members of the marginalized groups they claim to speak for. Sometimes they’re outright lying about who they are).

(For instance, Russian intelligence agents have used social media to pretend to be marginalized Americans and spread lies about Hillary Clinton.)

The formal rule is also easily exploited by abusive people, along these lines:

An abusive person convinces their victim that they are the voice of marginalized people.

The abuser uses the rules about “when people tell you that you’re being oppressive, don’t argue” to control the victim.

Whenever the victim tries to stand up for themself, the abuser tells the victim that they’re being oppressive.

That can be a powerfully effective way to make victims in our communities feel that they have no right to resist abuse. 

This can also prevent victims from getting support in basic ways.

Abusers can send victims into depression spirals by convincing them that everything that brings them pleasure is oppressive and immoral. 

The abuser may also isolate the victim by telling them that it would be oppressive for them to spend time with their friends and family, try to access victim services, or call the police. 

The abuser may also separate the victim from their community and natural allies by spreading baseless rumors about their supposed oppressive behavior. (Or threatening to do so).

When there are rules against questioning call outs, there are also implicit rules against taking the side of a victim when the abuser uses the language of calling out.

Rules that say some people should unconditionally defer to others are always dangerous.

The rule also lacks intersectionality:

No one experiences every form of oppression or every form of privilege.

Call-outs often involve people who are marginalized in different ways. 

Often, both sides in the conflict have a point.

For instance, black men have male privilege and white women have white privilege.

If a white woman calls a black man out for sexism and he responds by calling her out for racism (or vice versa), “listened to marginalized people” isn’t a very helpful rule because they’re both marginalized.

These conversations tend to degenerate into an argument about which form of marginalization is most significant.

This prevents people involved from actually listening to each other.

In conflicts like this, it’s often the case that both sides have a legitimate point. (In ways that are often not immediately obvious.)

We need to be able to work through these conflicts without expecting simplistic rules to resolve them in advance.

This rule also tends to prevent groups centered around one form of marginalized from coming to engage with other forms of marginalization:

For instance, in some spaces, racism and sexism are known to be issues, but ableism is not.

(This can occur in any combination. Eg: There are also spaces that get ableism and sexism but not racism, and spaces that get economic justice and racism but not antisemitism, or any number of other things.)

When disabled people raise the issue of ableism in any context (social justice or otherwise), they’re likely to be shouted down and told that it’s not important.

In social justice spaces, this shouting down is often done in the name of “listening to marginalized people”.

For instance, disabled people may be told ‘you need to listen to marginalized people and de-center your issues’, carrying the implication that ableism is less important than other forms of oppression.

(This happens to *every* marginalized group in some context or other.)

If we want real intersectional solidarity, we need to have space for ongoing conflicts that are not simple to resolve.